Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Home, No Place (utopia)

We are announcing three Home Restaurant dates in September. When we started doing these Home Restaurants we had no idea what to expect. John and I met catering so we knew we could actually cook out of a home kitchen. What has been unexpected is how we regard our home now. We have always thought this nineteenth century Victorian magical (forgiven it for lack of closets). Before we moved in eleven years ago our dear friend David Knight designed and laid out our home–we could not be happier.

The interesting thing is, and I want to preface this with the fact that since we closed the restaurant I have always worked out of my home, To turn your home into a restaurant on what ever scale is a completely different beast. One begins to view 'home' with an intense aesthetic as well as ergonomic necessity while at the same time making it 'home'. That is to say home is always a 'becoming' what it is and we enjoy sharing.

The intensity in which we ran Rupperts is a bit ridiculous when we look back. I mean to schedule the birth of your only child by inducing labor during your spring vacation may have been too much. But we loved what we did and it brought us as many challenges and joy as anything else I have ever done. To turn that same discerning energy on our home is both exhilarating and confusing on some level. To know when to turn off or to know when you have sacrificed Home for Work is not always apparent.

The best thing is we are living the life style we have always wanted. That is to say without hard boundaries. Martin Lane, John and I pick up just about anywhere and move in and out of work and play to the point where the distinction is erased…

So what IS interesting is we find our selves reorganizing everything, thinking how to make everything work better, from cleaning the basement to hanging hooks in the bathroom for wet towels, to thinking of how to start a roof garden with a bee hive. Efficiency and necessity collide with a everyday life–That includes Dinner Parties.

Many of the projects that we have only talked about are now coming to fruition, I feel in part because our home seems as much a place of potential as anything else, but also because there is access to so much information and we are coming across so many people who are making and doing things they are willing to share.

Home Restaurant1508 6th street, NW,Washington DC 20001

We are announcing three dates in SeptemberFriday, September 11 at 8pmThursday, September 17 at 7pmSaturday, September 26 at 8pm

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Sidra Forman

As chef, writer, speaker, florist, gardener and mom, we have a practice that integrates aesthetics, nutrition and health. We find pleasure inseparable from necessity. We live and work at a city studio with an urban garden that produces food and flowers for our work, family and friends. We cook with what we grow or use ingredients from local and 'best practice' sources. In this blog, we will discuss a collaboration that encounters food, flowers and gardens. We will share experiences, resources and recipes that make up an everyday practice.

Currently I am chef and food writer for Bob Greene’sBestlife Diet. I write and lecture about food, gardening and symbiosis. I have a flower and urban garden business where I use flowers, plants and seeds from 'best practice' sources (sidraforman.com). All the gardens have edible components. I run a Home Restaurant, sometimes Nomadic. We are working on The Farm at Walker Jones located at the Walker Jones Education Campus, a DC Public School.Rupperts Restaurant in Washington DC was my Home for many years and continues to inform my practice.